The Growing Clamour…

As MP’s continue to live in fear for their jobs, and, as has been suggested by some, perhaps even their lives, the Independent has found ten “respected figures at Westminster” for their solutions to the problems. Which, it seems, is increasingly in the call for political reform. Which is, apparently, an idea that has been floating around in the heads of many surviving MP’s for a long long time. Apparently.

The cynic in me suggests otherwise. The only way out of the hole is to push the case for political reform. And so they are. I will come back to the issue of reform shortly, but first I want to look at the continuing issue of expenses.  I’ve written previously about the hypocrisy of the Great British public, but I want to elaborate upon this a little more. I am convinced that anyone in the same position would have done the same. If they were not being stopped by those who should have prevented such abuses, they were inevitably going to claim for what they thought they could. It is easy for the public to act all high and mighty over this subject, but it should be remembered that MP’s are only human, with the fallabilities that the rest of society has. Now I do not condone what they have done, but I think I can understand it.

Anyway, returning to the issue of reform. David Cameron is climbing out of the political wreckage with a lot of credibility, if only because it has given him the opportunity to look more like a man of the people than ever before. His suggestions for reform, whilst not entirely new, certainly carry a lot of weight in the midst of the current predicaments. He has talked of “Progressive Conservative”, in much the same way it seems as Tony Blair once talked about “New Labour”. Two of the suggestions that have emerged are set-term parliaments and a change of system. Of course there are others, but it is these I wish to discuss.

I think I agree with the notion of a fixed-term parliament. The notion is easy to talk about and promote at the moment, with the clamour behind the idea, but in reality it is much harder to bring into practice. Fixed-term parliaments would tone down the level of party-politics that exists at the moment. Rather than the PM calling an election when his party is performing well in the polls, instead he would be forced to have it at a certain time, regardless of poll performances, regardless of situation or circumstance. Regardless of anything. It takes away frustrating uncertainty that grows with not being able to have a say when the chips are down for any government. There are problems with the idea of fixed-term parliaments, I will admit, but I think that for politics to move forward, steps such as this need to be taken.

The second issue is that of the system. People have criticised the ‘first-past-the-post’ system as being too ineffective, and not representative of enough of the electorate. Chuka Umunna, a Labour candidate, writes that it’s a “ridiculous situation” where “around 100,000 voters in a few marginal seats decide the outcome of an election”. Possibly. However, I do not think that the alternative is much more conducive to a strong, and more importantly, a stable country. PR, I would suggest, only serves to weaken any government into a fragile coalition incapable of making significant progress. I have never been convinced by the PR system and cannot see it providing any more answers than the system we currently have.

As I mentioned previously, there are  many more issues that come with political reform, many of which will be explored by the politicians in the coming weeks. There is one thing that is clear though. The idea of reform is very clearly on the table, and it won’t be going anywhere for a long time. What is to be seen though is whether Cameron can manage the pressures of promises with the reality of government.

Public Privacy…

So critics are attacking the new law which says all ISP’s are required to record all emails sent. This is all very well and good, but it won’t change anything, the law will still come in at the start of March, and all our private emails will be recorded, because, of course, we are all terrorists until proven otherwise. I find this grossly invasive, and it matters not a jot to me that the content of any emails are not stored, it is the principle.

And it is easy for the government to get away with. If they had come out and suggested recording our post, there would have been uproar from a number of parties, and a number of generations. As emails are based in the new generation of internet users, the government have almost automatically eliminated any outcry from older generations simply because they send far too few emails to be concerned with any censorship that may or may not occur.

For me however, email is an important tool of communication. That all my email correspondances would be recorded for a year is an utter invasion of privacy. It doesn’t matter if there is something to hide or not. It is known that any email correspondance with key words on already alerts authorities, but they want to take this further by monitoring who we send our emails to? The law seems confused too, what good is the information of who the email was between without the information of what the content was? Surely this opens up the possibilty of actually recording, and storing, all our emails, and being able to access any content that they so choose? This is so very invasive it’s stupid. It is akin to going through someone’s bin and finding confidential letters. Except that these letters haven’t been thrown away, all that has happened is that they have been sent, to only the intended recipient(s).  Surely if there is terrorist communications made by email, it is the job of the security services to find out, and take appropriate action? Reading between the lines then, is such a blanket step of recording all emails an admittance that the services are not up to the job?

Such a law is in line with the default governmental setting of presuming we are all guilty of something, until we can prove otherwise. The old adage of being “innocent until proven guilty” has swung so far the opposite way that we are now all terrorists in the governments eyes, unless we can prove we aren’t. I’m not a terrorist, and I very much dislike being treated as one by my own government. The world of suspicion in which we live has taken another step on the road to an Orwellian ending. This isn’t a good thing.

Two thoughts…

I have just a couple of ponderances to give to you today.

1. With the trouble in the middle east kicking off one more with disappointing gusto, just where is Britain’s middle east envoy? That’s right, he’s over in America telling everyone how part of everything is luck. According to Alec Trevelyan in Goldeneye Tony,  the other half is fate. At a time when the middle east is crying out for help from anyone who is willing to give it, wouldn’t it be nice to actively see Blair doing something about it rather fattening his own wallet by participating in student conferences?

2. At the moment I have nothing to confirm this, as I’ve heard it only in conversation, but guess who the biggest advertiser is on the tv? That’s right, it’s the government. Various governmental campaigns such as the “know your limits” campaign, the car-tax advert or the new obesity advert all come from those at the top concerned with our well-being. It goes a long way to explain just why most people get really annoyed with adverts, and, naturally enough, change the channel.